Armstrong Circle Theatre (TV Series) The Contender (1954) User Reviews

A nice look at the flip-side of boxing.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 27 August 2012]

Hollywood has made a ton of films that dramatize boxing--and very few which haven't. Because this film dares to show the flip-side of boxing, I strongly recommend you see it.

The film begins with a high-ranked boxer (Paul Newman) meeting up with a guy who he had a fight with a few years earlier. This other boxer (Nehemiah Persoff) didn't even recognize him--even when Newman told him about their earlier fight. It's sad--but the guy was now a punchy-drunk bum--with a lousy job and no future. This really, really shakes Newman, as he is about to have a chance at winning the title--and he wonders is it even worth it. He vows to quit and not even take the title match--and his wife (Inger Stevens) and manager (Frank McHugh) try very hard to get him to relent. Overall, it's well-acted and very thought-provoking. Well worth seeing and very unusual.

Inside the ring your the boss

[kapelusznik18 · 6/10 · 27 September 2017]

***SPOILERS*** Two years before he made his break-out movie as boxer Rocky Graziano in "Somebody up there likes me" an unknown Paul Newman played a very similar part on TV as boxer Jimmy Polo who's about to get his big brake in fighting the #1 Middleweight contender Patty Packer in Madison Square Garden for a shot at the title. A funny thing happened to Jimmy as he went to fight Packer in that he ran into an old friend and fellow boxer Jeff Gardell played by Nehemiah Persoff the guy who that same year-1954-palyed the creepy looking taxi driver in the movie "On the Waterfront". Poor Jeff has lost his marbles fighting long after he was already washed up now is selling handkerchiefs- 5 for a dollar- on the street corner. And a shocked Jimmy soon realized that he'll soon end up the same way-brain dead-if he doesn't quit the fight game while his brain is in still functioning condition.

With the big fight just hours away Jimmy has second thoughts to go through with the fight but finally decides that win lose or draw this will be his last fight and then call it quits so he can spend the rest of his life with his pretty wife Bess, Inger Stevens, and 12 year old son Jackie, Dickie Belton, as a normal and not mentally damaged ex professional boxer. With his both manager and trainer trying to get Jimmy against his will back into the ring in the end it's his pride that takes over. In not wanting to be a quitter Jimmy gets back into the ring for the very last time and what happens to him is left up to the imagination of those of us watching.

You can see in both Paul Newman and Inger Stevens that they were to see bigger and better things to come in their future in the movies as well as on TV. Newman for his part showed both his violent as well as sensitive side playing the confused Jimmy Polo who now realized that he's not really cut out for the fight game that up until then he's been-in having a record of 26 wins and four defeats- so successful in. And as for the 20 year old Inger Stevens despite her being in her only second movie or TV role she was as convincing as any actress much older and more experienced then her who could have been playing the part of Jimmy caring and concerned , for his safety, wife. And as things turned out it was Persoff the oldest and most beat up looking of the trio he's now still with us alive & kicking at 98 years of age.

Powerful acting by Paul Newman

[lor_ · 16 November 2023]

In his first starring role, Paul Newman dominates the screen as "The Contender", playing a boxer on the rise, the day before his big fight which if successful should earn him a title shot. The future superstar's acting chops are on display, with elements of his great "The Hustler" performance already on view.

With very fine support by Frank McHugh as his loyal manager and Inger Stevens as his supportive wife, Newman punches across an indecisive character worthy of "Hamlet", getting more than the jitters when he encounters a down & out fighter he had beaten just six years before, now reduced to a nearly brain-dead has-been selling handkerchiefs on the street corner.

His life at a crossroads, this contender he's playing decides to quit, before he ends up a beat-up palooka himself. But the fight is only a day away, and he'll be leaving everyone in the lurch. Edmund Morris' screenplay does a fine job of presenting the issues facing Newman's character, and the show carefully avoids the genre's cliches, looking at the human side of the story rather than the sports angle.